He was yelling 'fire!' Anderson realized, and she could smell the smoke.

There was no smoke detector chirping, but as she looked outside her bedroom door she could see a haze.

"I knew, right away, that something wasn't right," Anderson recalled for the Times-Herald on Friday.

One of her two sons was sleeping in bed with her, and so she gathered him up and went to grab the other from his bedroom.

Her husband, Travis Collinson, had left for work.

With four-year-old Jaxson in one arm and two-year-old Taytan in the other, Anderson turned to leave her son's room and was met by a wall of smoke.

"I couldn't see a thing. I was yelling, 'Where is the fire? How do I get out?'" she said. "My dad came barging into the house and I could hear him screaming … I could hear him breaking the baby gates off the stairs."

Anderson followed the noise. Eventually she found the staircase.

"When I started stumbling down the stairs, I knew I was going in the right direction," she said. "My dad took the kids from me and got them out, then I ran out of the house and fell down on the front lawn."

She escaped the fire and stumbled into a flurry.

Though all of the humans in the house made it out, their puppy didn't.

"The boys are still asking about him," said Anderson.

One of Anderson's neighbours offered to care for her boys while another helped her. Then she heard the sirens, and soon she and the boys were on their way to the hospital to be checked for smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

"That's where the rest of our lives started," she explained.

The Red Cross came to the hospital and offered assistance, but the family's future — especially where they would stay — was up in the air.

Even now, they "can't go back home."

"They haven't decided whether or not they'll be tearing it down or doing a restore with smoke bombing and stuff," said Anderson.

"Most of the damage was downstairs, where the fire started. The damage upstairs was all from the smoke," she added. "Where the fire was, it's unrecognizable."

After the fire department finished their investigation, Anderson was told the fire was caused by a spark from a laptop cord.

She came to realize that her nephew and her father Art had saved her life and the lives of her sons.

As donations of clothing, toys and cash poured in, she also realized how generous Moose Jaw could be to those who lost everything.

"There were people we didn't even know who reached out. We had a place to go before we even left the hospital, at the Heritage Inn," said Anderson. "We only left there today."

Now the family is renting a place while they wait for the verdict on their home, and things are getting back to normal.

"We'll go back to work and continue on with our lives," she said.

"We have each other. We lost our things, but home is wherever we are," added Anderson. "And thanks to everyone who has helped us, it's going to be an easy transition."

ON PAGE TWO: Elks among vanguard of early supporters; fundraiser planned